Key visit looming for IOC boss as Queensland sells its Olympic vision

Queensland representatives hoping to bring the 2032 Games to Australia will have a golden opportunity to put their case to International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach when he arrives on the Gold Coast for a summit in May.

Bach has been confirmed to attend the SportAccord Summit from May 5-10, which will also bring 1500 delegates from various sports federations, broadcasters and organising committees to a region that may host the first Australian Olympic and Paralympic Games since Sydney 2000.

Man to impress: IOC boss Thomas Bach will be on the Gold Coast in May as Qld pushes for the 2032 Games. Credit:Patrick Semansky

The push for a south-east Queensland Games gained substantial momentum on Friday after a feasibility study from a Council of Mayors found the Games could be delivered at a cost of $900m, which was $300m less than the recent Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast.

That costing takes into account IOC contributions from sponsors and broadcast rights and domestic revenue including ticket sales, which would dwarf that of the Commonwealth Games given the immense size of an undertaking that would see more than 10,000 athletes compete.

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Bach will be a key player in the extended bidding process, which now takes place over a number of years and steps and will be in keeping with the IOC's new goals of having a cost-neutral Games. That has been designed to avoid Olympics like Rio, which left a swathe of white elephant venues once the show left town.

He will also have an audience with Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates, who has been bullish about a Brisbane bid from the start but said the region would need significant infrastructure builds to be viable. That would need to be fast-tracked at a state and federal level for the plan to proceed to the next step.

Queensland premier Annastasia Palaszczuk was cautiously optimistic on Friday but said there would need to be significant injections of funding from the federal government if it was to get off the ground.

"First and foremost, there would have to be agreement on all levels of government. Secondly, we would have to see a very strong contribution from the federal government, the likes of which we saw for the Sydney Olympics, and we have not had any of those conversations with the federal government," Palaszczuk said.

Gone are the days when potential host cities would present their vision and pitch and wait for the votes to be counted. The IOC process now takes place over a number of years, with Brisbane needing to be fully committed by 2022 before an announcement in 2025.

The AOC would also have to be on board by that point, although other potential 2032 hosts may already have dropped by the wayside if the IOC did not believe they could meet the timeline or budget or deliver a Games up to an acceptable standard.

Should the AOC be satisfied that a Brisbane bid would have a strong chance of success, there would be a rolling series of visits and meetings by IOC powerbrokers before a final decision would be made seven years ahead of the Games.

The plan would see sports spread across Brisbane, the Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast and other regions throughout the state, with football preliminaries likely to be even further afield. Regional bids are likely to become far more common as the IOC struggles to attract potential suitors, and one of Brisbane's biggest rivals has come to the table with a similar offering.

The German region of North Rhine-Westphalia would host sports across 13 cities should it secure hosting rights, including Düsseldorf, Dortmund and Cologne. It says it has 80 per cent of the venues in readiness, while Brisbane has 60 per cent, the most glaring one outstanding being a main stadium, which would be down-sized afterwards in the manner of London 2012.

Other rivals include Jakarta, which has officially signalled its interest. It hosted the Asian Games with success last year and believes it could be the backdrop for the first Games to be held in south-east Asia.

An historic bid between North and South Korea is also a possibility, with talks held this month with the IOC. Bach is on the record as being supportive of the bid, which arose from a summit between leaders Kim Jong-Un and Moon Jae-in in September.

Mumbai shapes as another potential candidate, although it already faces a major hurdle, India having been suspended by the IOC from hosting any international events after it refused entry to a pair of shooters from Pakistan, which contravenes the Olympic charter.